Hello there,
I’m interested in the letterforms of this cross. It’s part of a small pilgrimage trail near the river Rhine. The inscription dates it to 1691.
The letters and drawings looks strangely monolinear, though. The other 17th/18th century crosses of the trail sport many different styles of lettering, but all are clearly chiseled and nothing like this.
Can this “grotesque” be authentic (maybe vernacular carving as @Simon Cozens proposed on typo.social) or did someone trace the letters with a power tool in modern times, possibly trying to make the weathered text legible again?
Comments
I assume one can have power tools and still do chiseling, but at least much of the time one sees this sort of rounded cut, and it is clear evidence of more-modern tooling. By which I mean at least 1900 and probably much later. (The first power tool was a drill, in 1895.) I expect somebody with more expertise in stone carving than I, can say more.
In this case, I am inclined to agree that this looks like a power tool has been used, because of the characteristic rounded inner shape of the strokes. You could do this with a Dremel.
Yes, I thought of a Dremel, too. It’s a bit hard to make out in the mobile phone shots but the traces gave enough of an impression, apparently.
I am also unsure of the method used, because of the absence of a v-cut. It is quite a shallow inscription.
Sometimes, I find things that are so idiosyncratic, I imagine the stonecutter thinking ‘You know what? I am going to try something new on this job.’
Or a naive 17th century stone cutter just whackin' the chisel straight into the slab with no concern for efficiency,r tradition. or probably his eyes.
Photos I've seen of ancient or medieval Norse stone inscriptions appear to be carved with a similar technique. Sadly the photographers seldom dwell on the technique or capture the texture of the tool marks, so, I'm kind of guessing. (I'd rule out Dremels, having burnt out a few on far less demanding materials.) If it's made with modern tools, they'd have been using something like reciprocating hammer chisels.